Custom LEGO track (not mine)

[zephyr1934]

While stumbling through youtube, I tripped over this neat little video of homemade track out of plywood and thought it might be of interest to some on this forum (apologies if it has already been discussed)

[Locomotive Annie]

That's a clever way to get a long length of run cheaply alright, but I would imagine you would need a table saw setup that would give you fine accurate cuts to make it work successfully.

[Werlu Ulcur]

Clever, but not very easily done. Plywood is easy to work with, but to make accurate cuts (and that's the word of order here) you can't use hand-held tools. Unless you have access to the right tools it would be tough to make a lot of pieces.

[Electricsteam]

I think the track is kind of cute It reminds me alot of the thomas wooden rail.

[Spitfire2865]

This is amazing. But a switch would probably be very hard to make.

[Electricsteam]

This is amazing. But a switch would probably be very hard to make.

It would be easy if you could make a Wood to Lego adapter then there would be no need for a wood switch...

[Spitfire2865]

I meant like entirely wood. No Lego track at all. Itd be cool to see even an attempt at a wooden one.

[Phoxtane]

Garden Lego railways could become a possibility with this stuff, if you stained it with something designed for protecting decks and the like!

[Electricsteam]

Garden Lego railways could become a possibility with this stuff, if you stained it with something designed for protecting decks and the like!

You have a real good point there Phoxtane!

[legobanker]

Now all you have to do is make it work for us die hard 9v fans. Great idea as others have said. I like the idea of a garden railway.

[branolego]

Now all you have to do is make it work for us die hard 9v fans. Great idea as others have said. I like the idea of a garden railway.

a little glue, some tin foil, and youve got 9v track

[Hrw-Amen]

I like the idea for making long stretches of track and at different radius curves, I guess they can make them whatever they like? It would be a good idea for the garden true and I would love to have a garden set up as it is about the only place I have enough room for a really long run. But I think it would need some work to make it look more track like, perhaps painting it a steel or dark grey would help? I think I would also want more but thinner spacers to represent sleepers and make it look more real. However, I do love well the train runs around it and they seem to be getting up a good turn of speed on some of the track. It certainly is interesting to see what people come up with.

[splatman]

Building that, to me, wood be child's play. The hard(wood) part wood be working on it till it's complete. When building something, running out of gusto is worse than running out of material. Of course, this is one of those things that I can build a little at a time, and be able to use whatever I build first, right away.

I have thought, over the years, of building things out of wood, to use with LEGO, and have done so a few times, but never this.

[bricks n bolts]

Garden Lego railways could become a possibility with this stuff, if you stained it with something designed for protecting decks and the like!

I saw on a website somewhere (been trying for ages to find it again but now giving up) complete instructions for building garden railway concrete moulds and base segments (for O gauge I think) with metal track on top that could be easily adapted to L gauge 9v as the tracks were secured via the concrete.

The beauty of it was that the concrete segments were very high and could be easily buried in your garden without the track shifting at all.

[zephyr1934]

I saw on a website somewhere (been trying for ages to find it again but now giving up) complete instructions for building garden railway concrete moulds and base segments (for O gauge I think) with metal track on top that could be easily adapted to L gauge 9v as the tracks were secured via the concrete.

Oh, that would be cool

[Spitfire2865]

I can see it now, a new branch of Lego train modelers, Lego in the Garden. Haha

[Fugazi]

I saw on a website somewhere (been trying for ages to find it again but now giving up) complete instructions for building garden railway concrete moulds and base segments (for O gauge I think) with metal track on top that could be easily adapted to L gauge 9v as the tracks were secured via the concrete.

The beauty of it was that the concrete segments were very high and could be easily buried in your garden without the track shifting at all.

Is this what you were thinking about?

[bricks n bolts]

Is this what you were thinking about?

Yes, that's it!

[Locomotive Annie]

I remember seeing that method of building track when I was still messing about with 'G' scale and I thought it was really clever.

[zephyr1934]

I doubt that the plywood would survive the elements in the garden, but the flexibility of the track reminds me of some fiberglass panels we had as kids. Perhaps there is something mass produced that could be easily appropriated (flashing, or ???) to a new task as lego track in the great outdoors.

[peterab]

I doubt that the plywood would survive the elements in the garden, but the flexibility of the track reminds me of some fiberglass panels we had as kids. Perhaps there is something mass produced that could be easily appropriated (flashing, or ???) to a new task as lego track in the great outdoors.

There's quite cheap black poly garden edging sold here which might work, with spacers which looked like sleepers it might even look the part too. I imagine garden edging is designed to with stand the sort of conditions we have in mind too :-)

[zephyr1934]

Thinking about this further, the serious wooden railroaders build their own (track, rolling stock, etc). That would be kind of neat, a "Thomas" style wooden railroad track for PF trains. You can buy the bits to make standard wooden rails, e.g., here and here, but the gauge and depth is all wrong for lego trains.